A few kilometres north of Solo is the village of Sangiran. It's here that the best specimens of Java Man remains were discovered in the late 19th century, and it's here they've built a museum about him.
Java Man was hailed as one of the 'missing link' species, bolstering support for Darwin's recently published evolution theory. Examples have been dated at nearly 2 million years to about 140 thousand years before the present, and found subsequently in lots of places around the world.
The Sangiran museum has a lot of educational stuff about evolution generally, as well as documenting and housing some of the local finds. It also has a few references to Homo floresiensis, 'yang sangat problematis' ('which is highly problematic'). The problem, as I understand it, is that while almost all the world's archeologists consider the 'Hobbit' to be a distinct species of tiny hominid which survived on Flores until fairly recently, this was hotly contested by the top Indonesian paleoanthropologist. Teuku Jacob is dead now, so his name can be blackened. He's said (by the foreigners at least) to have stolen the exhibits, damaged a valuable specimen, and had the cave where it was found blocked off so he couldn't be proved wrong. My Indonesian isn't good enough to work out what the Java Man museum's official line is on the controversy.
I got to Sangiran very easily by public bus and motorcycle pillion taxi, and spent a comfortable hour or two wandering through the galleries, enjoying the airconditioned respite from the heat outside.
Homo erectus (Java Man) is the third from the left on their illustration below.
No comments:
Post a Comment